Halloween at the Pines House
by William Easley
Summary: At the end of October, Dipper takes some time to record in his Journal some thoughts on what's been happening and what is yet to come. And Billy Sheaffer goes trick-or-treating as a Dalek.


_Note: I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them._

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**Halloween at the Pines House**

**(October 31, 2016)**

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**From the Journals of Dipper Pines: **_Tuesday, October 31, 10:40 p.m. _Halloween's almost over, and I have to go to bed soon. But I realized it's been more than two weeks since I made an entry in the Journal, and I wanted to catch up on just a few things.

Wendy's arm is all better, she says. It was strange: though her astral body, which had suffered the injury, is self-healing (and instantly healing, she told me—"I picked up my hand and stuck that sucker back on my arm like it was no big deal, and it just went into place there and stayed"), evidently the damage sort of reflected in her real body. No wound, but her wrist hurt and she said she wore a wrist brace for ten days, and then it seemed OK again. Now it doesn't hurt at all.

She said Soos thought she had carpal tunnel syndrome and then got off on the idea that maybe carps had, like, underwater tunnels or some deal, and if they called them "Carpal Tunnel Sea Domes," that would be so totally cool.

Soos. Gotta love him.

Anyway, she says that work in the Shack is tailing off. "It's a lot like back when you guys first came up here and business was, like, constant, but not heavy, remember? Back when I could duck out and go goof off up on the roof or we could just take off at any time. Man, I miss those days!"

Like me, she got debriefed by Grunkle Ford, too, and told him what astral travel was like. He's intrigued, but he and Fiddleford talked it over and decided it would be too risky unless they set up two pads on both sides of the country, maybe, like Star Trek transporter pads. One in the Shack and one, maybe, in the national headquarters of some agency in case somebody needed instantaneous travel. I'll probably come back and black that part out. Anyway, they've put experiments on hold for now.

Wendy says Lorena told her that Ford's more relaxed than he's ever been—he always loved college (though he didn't get to go to his preferred one), and running his own graduate school is like a dream come true. I'm really happy for him.

Let's see—Grunkle Stan dragged Wendy along with him over to Ghost Falls several afternoons. Turns out he's learned to SCUBA dive! He goes over to the cave behind the falls and scrounges for gold. He's probably found most of it now, but the water's gone down a lot—it's been a dry fall—and Wendy said last time he came back with two heavy sacks of it that he dug from under a thick layer of silt.

He paid her five hundred dollars for her help, in cash, and warned her, "Keep it off the books. The I.R.S. don't worry so much about gifts this size," so I'm guessing he pulled out at least a hundred thousand worth of gold. He is not a generous tipper.

Between that and Ford's sharing a cut of his patent income, Stan's not hurting for money. Still he keeps running off for weekends at casinos, too, and Wendy says he never comes home without a knowing grin on his face. He says it's skill, Ford says it's luck he somehow gained from Weirdmageddon. I don't know what to think, and I also don't know how he keeps from getting banned in the casinos.

What else? I've face-timed with Eloise four or five times since we met the Emolental. She was shaken up, but she's swinging back to normal. She admitted to me, "It was really scary, but you know what? I had a good time! And it was so great seeing you again!"

**The next paragraph, except for the numerals was encoded in an ingenious cipher that Dipper created and that he has named Pines 1314: **I know I'll tell Wendy this, but Mabel keeps sneaking looks at my Journals, and I'd really prefer her not to know about it because she'd never let me hear the end of it. Have to remember the key is 362,924. OK, Eloise told me she was disappointed that I've shaved. I explained to her that I really didn't have a beard, just stubble that I doctored with Mabel's eyelash makeup, but every time we face-time, she keeps trying to coax me into growing it out again. I don't think so. At my age it would be stupid-looking and patchy. Maybe I could barely manage like a soul patch or a little goatee, but—nah, not yet. Maybe in college.

OK, anyway, she told me they're getting a new principal, a woman who's already addressed the students, and Eloise says she thinks she'll like her. Probably just as well. Mr. Kamfer seemed too nervous to be a good principal, but then I met him under admittedly strained circumstances.

So . . . last items. Tonight was OK. Mabel took Billy Sheaffer out trick-or-treating, and of course she was in costume. She was dressed up as Clara Oswald, and she made me a Peter Capaldi outfit—just by modifying my black suit, giving it a red lining, and making me wear a white shirt and floof up my hair—but nobody would know who we were unless we were together with Billy, who was a Dalek, a costume he made with a lot of help from Mabel.

She had to carry his trick-or-treat bucket. And she claims she examined the candy to make sure it didn't have needles or razor blades in it afterward, but I'm pretty sure she just went through the loot bag and ate any piece of candy she liked after deeming it suspicious.

Anyway, she brought him back home a little before nine, and then after that she and I then opened the door and gave out candy. Nobody even suspected we were in costume. Not one of her better efforts, I'm afraid.

The last trick-or-treaters, a pirate crew of a little boy and his two kid sisters, came around nine-thirty. Mabel and I sat in the living room about half an hour after that, and I asked her: "Have you talked to Billy about his crush on you?"

She looked as uncomfortable as she could while munching on a Coco Kreme Dream Bar, swallowed and said, "Not yet. I'm waiting to see if it'll wear off. Meanwhile, you know—I'm being nice to him, but that's all."

I shook my head. "I think there's gonna be trouble sooner or later," I told her. "Billy's having flashes of who he is. He and I are going to have to have a serious talk before long. And if Bill somehow has even a little of his old powers left over—well, I don't know how Billy will deal with it."

"Yeah, I'd hate it if I'd had real magic power at the age of twelve," Mabel admitted. "Except it would be fun to turn Waddles into a big old pink kitten!" She looked guilty, because Tripper raised his head and gave her a sharp look. "Sorry, boy, but that's my awkward secret. I like kittens! But I wuv oo!"

Tripper rolled his eyes, as much as a dog can, and lay down again with a sigh.

I showed Mabel some of the sketches that the studio had sent on. They're in the planning phases with the cartoon series they're making from my first three books—they're going to call it _Granite Rapids—_and she had the same reaction I did at first: "They make us look so cartoony!"

"It _is_ a cartoon," I pointed out. "And these are kind of patterned on the cover illustrations—"

"Which I don't really like," she put in.

"—but simplified. I don't know. Half of me hopes it'll be a big hit, and half of me hopes it'll just run for a season or two. It feels strange. It's not really my vision of what the characters should be like, but the scripts are pretty close to the books—the first book will be four half-hour episodes, looks like. I guess we'll see."

"Yeah, and I'll bet there'll be geeks writing fanfiction and making sexy fanart," Mabel said.

"Let's hope not. Well, it's a good studio, anyhow, so maybe it'll be OK. Anyway, the money's good."

"It'll put you through college," she said. "And grad school!"

"College is enough, and it'll put both of us through."

She giggled. "Oh, yeah—you and Wendy."

"No, you and me," I said. "You'll have enough to get through Olmsted art school. I'm sharing with you."

She smiled. "Aw, so sweet. You don't have to do that! You did all the work!"

"But I based it on the things we did," I said. "And we did them together. Plus, you gave me a lot of the ideas, so I owe you."

"Well—OK, thanks! It'll be nice not having to take a part-time job in college. You're a great bro, Brobro. I have trained you well."

"But seriously, you're going to have to discourage Bill soon now."

She squirmed a little. "Soon. OK. I promise I will think seriously about it."

"Come on, please?"

Mabel looked embarrassed. I should have taken a photo. "Well . . . I know, I know. But every girl should have a kid get a crush on her once. Wendy did. Grenda did. Candy did. Pacifica does it all the time. I think it's a part of life I need to experience for me, Mabel."

"But it won't do Billy any good if it goes too far."

"Up to now, he hasn't said anything. I mean, his eyes just get big—I worry about the fake one falling out—and he gets a goofy smile on his face. But, yeah, I'll brainstorm a way to let him down easy. Uh, Dip? Do you think the Axolotl or whatever intends Billy to have, you know, a romance? Maybe a family?"

"I don't understand the Axolotl," I said. "I don't think anybody does. Or can. But—well, my best guess would be that Billy's supposed to grow up to have a normal life, so, I don't know, I guess—maybe? But sooner or later, he'll know where he came from. And he'll know he has to live this one human life he gets so that when it's over he'll then get a chance to redeem himself."

"Yeah, kinda hard to do. I understand he wiped out a whole universe there, starting with his family. What're they gonna do, a reboot? Like Spider-Guy?"

"You're asking the wrong person," I told her. "Take it up with the Axolotl next time you run into him. It. Whatever. Meantime—"

"Plan Let Billy Down Easy. Right. I'll sleep on it," Mabel said.

So that's where we are. And now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow afternoon, Coach wants me to start running time trials so we'll know where we have to be next spring.

Eleven-fifteen, really past time for me to turn in.

Goodnight, Journal. Let's go dream about Wendy.

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The End


End file.
